Sunday, 25 September 2016

KING SUNNY ADE AT 70..BY REUBEN ABATI

Chief Sunday
AdeniyiAdegeye, the legendary juju musician popularly known as King Sunny Ade
deserves the four-month-long celebration of his 70th birthday which
began on September 1, marked with great attention on September 22, the actual
date of his birth, and scheduled to run till December 31, 2016, in the United
States, Nigeria and the UK. With two Grammy nominations, over 50 years of
genius-level achievement as a musician, and over 120 albums, many of which
remain evergreen, King Sunny Ade has proved his mettle as a world-class
musician, a true artist, an impresario and an astute businessman.

This great Nigerian
artiste is better experienced in performance. I still watched him on stage in
Ibadan about two weeks ago, and characteristically, he remained on stage for
hours entertaining guests with dexterous dancing, his mastery of multiple
instruments and the infectious joy with which he performs his task. It is hard
to believe that the old man is actually 70. He looks today almost exactly the
same way he looked more than a decade ago. He keeps belting out new songs, and
winning new fans.

His humility on
stage is impressive and that is something many of these one-album, two-album
mega stars of the new generation of musicians should learn from King Sunny Ade
and other members of his generation.

King Sunny Ade makes music, particularly
the juju genre to which he has contributed greatly and helped to build into a
global brand, seem like something really easy and effortless. He is above all,
a cross-over artiste, a polyvalent genius. All true art appears easy.

The mark of a true
artist lies in his originality and commitment and innovativeness. The full
distillation of genius places the depth of the rigour at an aesthetic distance,
to be discovered instantly and vicariously but with the full impact of talent
in view. KSA’s career is a living example of how originality, endurance and
determination usually pay off in the long run. In the early part of that
career, he faced very stiff competition from the likes of Ahuja Bello, Emperor
Pick Peters (e ki lo fo’mo ode ko ma
rinni pa do…), Y.K. Ajao,Admiral Dele Abiodun (Adawa Super Sound): equally
talented musicians who came onto the scene at a time when the public valued and
recognized creativity and true talent.

As it turned out,
KSA’s main rival was Chief Ebenezer Obey: and that rivalry endured and stood
out because while both are juju musicians,
they did not try to copy each other, and the originality of the one accented
the uniqueness of the other, providing a complementarity that the public
cherished and patronized even if the rivalry was also a victim of mischief. Today,
both King Sunny Ade and Chief Ebenezer Obey now in their winter season may not
wish to dwell too heavily on that season of their careers, and that is
perfectly fine, but what we remember is how that competition promoted the art
and the sub-genre ofjuju melody and
percussion.But note this: yet another critical moment in KSA’s career was the
emergence of a younger generation of juju
musicians.

The combination of SegunAdewale and Shina
Peters, for example, almost drove KSA off the juju scene and when that superb
collaboration collapsed, most regrettably I must say, and Shina Peters seized
the market with Afro-Juju, a greater deployment of syncopation, melody and
instrumental wizardry (Shina Peters posed a threat to KSA not to Ebenezer Obey
in this regard), the King’s career again seemed threatened.

There was also
DayoKujore (Osupati de, Osupati de o,
obairawo), or Dele Taiwo (theShina_Peters initial clone who later stood up
for himself), or well, Micho Ade (OgunLaye).
But KSA has survived all odds. He took dangerously ill at a time and yet he
survived. His music producer disappointed him. He set up his own label. His
band boys have abandoned him more than twice in the last 30 years, he simply
disbanded and put another team together. In the face of every adversity, he has
worked hard to prove that he is a master of the game, if not the overall owner
of it.

As he turns 70, we
salute his resilience and courage. We recommend a special focus on how this
particular artiste is completely self-made. When I interviewed him for The Guardian more than a decade ago when
he was still President of the Musicians Association,

PMEAN, he actually
confessed to me, that he practically learnt to speak English through personal
effort. But during the interview, he had a laptop in front of him. Too many
young artists today behave as if they know it all, or rather they are convinced
that they already know more than enough. Sorry, nobody ever knows enough.

That is why
Professors of more than 50 years are still burning the midnight candle. If King
Sunny Ade had not been a musician, he probably would be a university
Professor.He recently launched a radio
station in Ondo state, and he is planning to set up what he calls King Sunny
Ade Musical School.Baba 70,kofegba, and
although he is a home boy, stubbornly attached to his natal roots, he is a
nationalist as an artiste.

That is yet another
lesson for the younger generation. KSA is a master builder. And the builder of
the foundation is also a good watchman. Many young artistes are master
spenders. They live it up.They are
showy and flippant. They miss the big issues. Art requires depth. We find in
King Sunny Ade’s art, uncommon depth and rigour. That is what we celebrate and
salute.

The aesthetics of KSA’s
music should be the subject of in-depth academic inquiry. I may be wrong but I am yet to find such a contribution
beyond lame hagiography, but since a newspaper article cannot be devoted to the
slightly arcane subject of musical aesthetics and ethnomusicology, I will not
even attempt any pompous statements in that direction, but I can say this
safely: that King Sunny Ade has done a lot for Yoruba, Nigerian, and African
culture on the global stage. He is not yet in the same boat as the inimitable
Fela (Fela belongs to the one-name Pantheon of geniuses from Aristotle to the
Pope), but whenever anyone deems it necessary to create a Nigerian Hall of Fame
or a museum of the arts, there is no doubt that King Sunny Ade’s place is fully
assured as Nigeria’s extra-ordinary cultural ambassador and nationalist.

As band leader,
composer, singer and artiste, his accomplishments are huge and remarkable.
Between him and others in the second generation of the percussion-infused,
potentially growing juju music genre in Nigeria, they have sustained the legacy
of the pioneers in that genre: AyindeBakare, Moses Olaiya, I.K. Dairo, Dele
Ojo, Tunde King Nightingale, Bobby Benson, Kokoro, IrewoleDengel,
AdeoluAkinsanya, Ambrose Campbell.

The content of his
music, the shape, the sound, and the tone of his art reveal a nationalistic
spirit and a positive conscience that promote culture, values, unity, love,
progress, development and progressive leadership. King Sunny Ade has
successfully avoided a likely identification as a partisan politician also, but
his music is indeed intensely political: he is a politician for national
progress and so he makes friends across all bridges, with his voice and
associations. In the long run actually, every artist is a politician, because
artists serve the people, the market place of art is in the people’s minds,
whether the subject is love, unity or life’s many vanities.

Artists are not expected to be perfect
human beings. I do not think that anyone would describe King Sunny Ade at 70 as
a perfect family man. His stories convey the impression of an extra-ordinarily
adventurous and creative man on the romantic front. But if we judge creative
persons with the same standards with which we judge ordinary people, there
probably would be no art and no creativity. Some of the finest works of art in human
history have been produced by the most unusual souls: differentness ironically
produces such illumination previously unknown. For anyone who may have
misgivings about KSA, or any other artiste, let them focus on the art and not
the persona.Under the shadow of every
genius, stories are bound to sprout and become flowers.

Where is government? Both President
MuhammaduBuhari and the Minister of Information remembered King Sunny Ade on
his birthday. Very good - I know how that works. I issued many of such
statements. I suppose that King Sunny Ade and all other Nigerian artistes in
the various genres: plastic, visual, imagic, theatrical and spatial will be
most delighted, however, if government’s celebration of individual artistes or
a group such as Nollywood is translated into a coherent National Cultural
Policy or an Endowment for the Arts which properly recognizes the fundamental
rights of artistes as nation-builders and the strategic place of the creative
industry in the leadership process, Nigeria will gain a lot more. Artistes save
nations just as athletes, administrators, investors and scientists do:
harnessing all potentials strategically is how nations are built. King Sunny
Ade would probably be much happier if governments at various levels were to a
do a lot more for the Nigerian artist. The legacy objective of theFoundation which
he proposes, should be in this direction.

At 70, he is
definitely and now incontrovertibly an elder, may he live much longer before he
becomes an ancestor, may he also last longer than that his former boss, Fatai
Rolling Dollars, and if he so wishes, may God grant him that same strength with
which FataiRollar Dollars was cracking fire and attracting neighbourbood
maidens at close to 90. KSA, sa ma yin
won logo…baba omoigboro worldwide, tu-ale (!);may you remain healthy
upstairs and downstairs.

And may you also
continue to produce good music.And as for all the younger artistes wondering
what this is all about, I leave you with King Sunny Ade’s comments about how
nowadays, “we see more of vulgar lyrics”. He says younger artistes should be
more interested in “what the ears will hear and eyes will see in 20 years (and)
and they will not be ashamed to regret anything”. I made that same point a few
years ago, before I went to Abuja and I was crucified for weeks in a very
malicious public debate. Thank you KSA for telling them.